When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,48
married less than a year. The English are ridiculous about controlling unwed females, and then English husbands seem to forget they have wives at all.”
She did it again, brushed her hand over the wool of Duncan’s jacket. Perhaps touching him pleased her the way touching her pleased him.
“If your current difficulties did not beset you,” Duncan said, “would you allow me to court you?”
The fragrance of roses beset him, bringing to mind blooming gardens, honey-drunk bees, and cats curled contently on sun-warmed walkways.
She moved closer, not quite a lean. “I believe I would. I haven’t thought in terms of courtship for some time. I saved my husband the bother of managing his servants, while he provided me a fixed address. With the colonel—with Alphonse—he didn’t court me so much as he decided that I would suit him, or so I thought.”
More small admissions. The late husband had had a large enough household that the servants required management, meaning he’d been wealthy or even titled. The dunderheaded suitor who’d let her slip away had been or was in the military. A colonel, meaning he was a well-connected dunderhead.
“He decided you’d suit,” Duncan said. “What did you decide?”
“That I would suit him. I was wrong.” She closed the distance remaining between them, mere inches, wrapping her arms around Duncan’s waist and giving him her weight. He was thus half enfolded in her shawl with her, a warm place to be.
He embraced her, carefully, as he would have embraced someone frail from long deprivation. Matilda was not frail—slender, certainly, but she was gaining flesh, and she was in good health.
Duncan, however, was suffering from deprivation, from years of being a proper escort to his cousins, a proper dance partner to the wallflowers, a proper influence on Stephen. Propriety slid from his grasp and set free all manner of strange and wonderful yearnings.
Arousal—good old male desire—joined surprise and a difficult tenderness.
Matilda Wakefield could hurt him, even more deeply than he’d been hurt by the loss of his young wife. The harm would be unintentional, and by taking Matilda in his arms, Duncan was making a rash, Wentworth-style dare that he could either weather that pain or—he was a Wentworth—slay the dragons who pursued her.
“I won’t suit you either,” Matilda said, resting her cheek against Duncan’s chest. “In my present circumstances, I can’t suit anybody.”
Lord God, she felt wonderfully female. Whoever that husband had been, whoever the amorous Frenchmen were, they’d given her an appreciation for a lover’s embrace, because Matilda had bundled in close and fitted herself to Duncan’s body curve by curve.
Duncan’s wife had vowed to love, honor, and obey him until death did them part. She’d survived mere months, and love had never come into it.
“Matilda, you needn’t be concerned with suiting me. In this, at least, I must suit you, and you must suit yourself.”
She peered up at him, all lovely brown eyes and feminine mystery. “I fear you are correct, Mr. Wentworth.”
“Duncan.”
Her smile was mischievous and a little sad. “Duncan.” Then she kissed him.
Chapter Nine
Jane, Duchess of Walden, had taken to duchessing like a mare to spring grass, much to her own astonishment. Raised as a preacher’s daughter, widowed early in her first marriage, and then wed to Quinn Wentworth out of necessity rather than romance, she’d never expected to end up with a title.
Or to fall top over tiara in love with her duke.
A title was a great responsibility. Jane had charities to oversee, entertainments to plan, and a duke to partner, and such a duke. Quinn Wentworth had scrapped and fought his way up from the slums to become one of London’s wealthiest bankers, then with an equal lack of decorum found himself the bearer of a lofty title and married to Jane.
Quinn was settling in to his station, year by year, though he still liked to growl at and figuratively pounce upon the unsuspecting peer in the House of Lords from time to time. Jane was having a grand time not settling in to the role of duchess, but rather, comporting herself like a Wentworth.
She had no lapdog. She had a big, black, toothy Alsatian who answered to the name Wodin. He’d been a gift from the footmen and was much beloved belowstairs.
She held duchess teas, gathering with others of her ilk, kicking off her slippers, and comparing notes on the delicate art of being married to a duke. In Jane’s opinion, Quinn was, of course, the